NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The city of Nashville is going above and beyond to make sure your drive along metro roads is a smooth one.
The city has hired a research team from Pennsylvania to evaluate roads and determine which ones need attention.
The job will take close to two months to complete. It involves surveying over 1,700 miles of road for cracks and imperfections. The work is done with a digital survey vehicle outfitted with lasers.
“There’s one in each of the wheel paths then there’s two sets slightly off center. Those read the road surfaces at a thousandth of an inch perfection,” said Ronald Strine with Applied Research Associates.
The vehicle also features front and rear facing cameras that reads the road surface 15-feet-wide and 20 feet long and takes one continuous image.
By hiring field techs from applied research associates Metro Public Works hopes to be proactive and save taxpayer's money.
“They’re detecting wear and tear before it becomes a problem. The last thing you want to have happen is the road deteriorates so bad that now all of a sudden we've got to completely restore the road,” said Strine.
This year the team is surveying all roads west of the Cumberland River and downtown.
Once the paving survey work is completed the city will be given a quality report along with photos of the roads
“So at any point in time they can go back and look at when was the last maintenance was done and how much did we do. So it is a very prudent management system and they do it for entire city as well as the county.
The work should be done by the end of July.
Next year the team will be back to survey the roads east of the Cumberland.
